Sources for Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith

In 1938 Joseph Fielding Smith, the historian of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, aided by his associates in the Church Historian’s Office, published an immensely popular compilation of Joseph Smith’s sayings, writings, and discourses, titled Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. At the time, and for decades after, it was one of the most accessible resources for church members to read and study the words of Joseph Smith. Joseph Fielding Smith’s compilation was based on B. H. Roberts’s History of the Church, which was in turn based on later copies of Joseph Smith documents found in his multivolume manuscript history. Because of this, though generally accurate, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith is considered an outdated source for scholarly use. This index will aid researchers in finding more original texts for Joseph Smith quotations. In some cases, the sources linked to in this index demonstrate that a passage did not originate with Joseph Smith but with a scribe, newspaper editor, or other associate.

The table below links passages in Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith to the earliest known primary sources, most of which are available on the Joseph Smith Papers website. The headings from the 1938 publication are reproduced in the first column for easy reference. Page numbers refer to pagination in the first edition, which is identical to most later printings still in use. Some passages presented in Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith were amalgamated from multiple sources, in which cases the table cites all the sources used. Some of the source material not yet available on the Joseph Smith Papers website can be accessed using the digitized collections of the Church History Library and of the Perry Special Collections at Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library.

A full transcript of Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith is available at the Book of Abraham Project. Special thanks to Michael Duval, who assisted the staff in compiling the data used for the index presented here. To report errors or provide updates to this index, please contact us.